The present invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of twinspur, which is grown as a spring and summer flowering annual or perennial plant for use in containers, borders and in mass landscape planting. The new cultivar in the genus Diascia will be referred to hereinafter by the cultivar name ‘Aurora Dark Pink’. This application is co-pending with the related cultivars Diascia ‘Aurora Light Pink’ and Diascia ‘Aurora Apricot’ which have been hybridized and selected in the same manner.
The inventors have been interested and have collected plants of the genus Diascia since the early 1990s. Diascia, which is native to southern Africa, provides showy annual and perennial (in mild climates) plants whose predominant flower color range in nature is in the range of soft to dark pink, also white, lavender-pink, salmon and apricot. Plants of Diascia which are raised from seed are inherently variable in growth habit; ranging from loose, weak plants with brittle stems to plants with significantly shorter internodes. Various breeding programs, including the inventors', have aimed to develop improvements in plant habit and also an extension of the color range into the deep pink, red or orange shades and ideally with very similar compact habits for each color.
Commencing in or around 1998, the inventors commenced a breeding project to develop a uniform series of Diascia which exhibit flowers held erect and above the foliage, in a range of colors, and borne on plants with compact habit. By 2003, the inventors had isolated certain seedlings which presented stiffly-held longer racemes of individual flowers. Although the inventors deliberately selected and set aside parents for their presumed usefulness for immediate and future hybridization, the parents themselves were not released but given code names for the inventors' use. The female parent is known under code ‘9D423’ and the male parent is known under code ‘9D3102’. The inventors estimate that approximately thirty generations of crosses preceded the selection of ‘Aurora Dark Pink’ in 2009. ‘Aurora Dark Pink’ was selected by the inventors as an individual seedling within a population of many hundreds of seedlings which flowered in that year. ‘Aurora Dark Pink’ was selected by the inventors for its combination of qualities including length of inflorescence, arrangement of individual flowers within the inflorescence, clarity of flower color, compatibility and uniformity with other candidates for a related series.
The first asexual propagation of ‘Aurora Dark Pink’ was conducted in 2009 by the inventors at their nursery in Newport, Gwent, England. The method of asexual propagation used was vegetative tip cuttings. Since that time the unique and distinguishing characteristics of ‘Aurora Dark Pink’ has been determined stable, fixed, and reproduces true to type in successive generations of asexual reproduction.